Cumulative Flow Diagrams (CFDs) are valuable tools for tracking and forecasting the performance of your processes. In this post I will show you how you can create a Cumulative Flow Diagram in Excel that fetches the data from Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS 2010).

I was really looking forward to this tutorial and had high hopes for it. But I’m sorry to say that it did not live up to my expectations. It was way to focused on software practices for me. I was expecting much more on how to make an organization transition to a continuous flow approach. In hind sight this was my mistake as I didn’t look at the speakers backgrounds.

I actually left the tutorial right after lunch as I found out that the tools show case track had been moved to Wednesday and I needed some more preparations. I’m could have missed all the interesting stuff in the afternoon but it sounded like there was more software practices on the agenda.

But all was not lost. I had a great time at the welcome reception meeting lots of people I have followed on Twitter for a long time and others that I just met. Great conversations with lots of interesting people.

Yesterday, on the Monday afternoon, just after I arrived to Long Beach I meet up with a big crowed of speakers and other attendees for some beer and some great and relaxed conversations.

Here is a sneak peek at a screenshot from my presentation tomorrow on Visual WIP.

About Visual WIP

Visual WIP is a visualization tool to make your Work In Progress (WIP) visible. The visualization is a card-wall with stickies in different columns.

If work-in-progress limits are set for a column the same amount of kanban’s(slots/placeholders) are added to the column. If more work is added to the column than the set work-in-progress limit the column background will change color.

The main goals of Visual WIP is to:

Visualizer a process work-in-progress by using strong visual signals with a card wall metaphor.

Utilize multi monitors to enable to both show an overview from more that 10 feet’s and show detailed information when closer.

Use a plug-in model to enable customization and support different electronic backing systems. The main focus is to support Team Foundation Server 2010 but SharePoint is also in the roadmap.

Not tied to a specific process as Kanban can be applied to any process. Currently MSF for Agile for Team Foundation Server 2010 is the process that Visual WIP is developed against.

Visual WIP or Visual Work In Progress is a workflow visualizer. Visual WIP visualizes work items from Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 based on Work Item Queries. This post describes Visual WIP early in the development and as it will be show at a demo.

Below are some screen shots that shows the basic functionality for Visual WIP

Picture 1.

Picture 1 shows the main screen with the ribbon shown. This version support adding single columns to the board in the main window.

Picture 2.

Picture 2 shows the column settings window for a single column. You can set Column name, Work in progress limit and the Work Item Query in TFS that should be used to populate the column.

Picture 3.

Picture 3 shows the main screen again with four single columns added.

The column User Stories Development has it’s positioning tool shown. Use this tool to move: Up, Down, Left and Right. Use the sliders to adjust the Width and Height. The column User Stories Development has a WIP limit of 2 and both slots are taken.

The column User Stories Ready for test has a WIP limit of 2 but only 1 slot is taken.

The column User Stories Testing has a WIP limit of 1 and is taken.

The column User Stories Delivered has no WIP limit.

I will keep posting updates regularly showing the progress of Visual WIP.

Today at Sumpan Lean Coffee I showed a slightly updated prototype of my Team Foundation Server 2010 Kanban board. I got some good feedback that I will try to incorporate as I progress. Below is a new screenshot.

I have added support for a shared work in progress limit over two columns as shown in the Development column.